Drag queens and proud boys

Up the hill from where we live—out in Chardon, Ohio—a restaurant and a church have teamed up to offer two drag events this coming Saturday. Their plans are causing some stir.

The restaurant is hosting two “Drag Brunches.” You have to be over 18 to attend and they are sold out. The church is sponsoring an afternoon “Drag Story Hour.” It is a ticketed event, but I don’t know much about it otherwise.

It has been reported that the Proud Boys are inviting members and sympathizers to show up to protest Saturday’s events. They threaten guns and violence. “It will be wild” one post promised. (Sound familiar?)

A few days ago, a call went out to area clergy and others to also come on Saturday to support the events, and to counter the Proud Boys. This morning the organizers are asking supportive folks who do not already have tickets to stay home on Saturday but to instead attend a prayer vigil tonight in Chardon. I believe it is a wise decision to let law enforcement deal with any protesters.

I do not know much about drag events. I think I may have gone to a drag show with seminary friends in San Francisco in the ‘60s. If so, I hardly remember it. I don’t know what’s involved in a drag brunch or story hour. Frankly, I don’t know much about drag culture, etc., at all, and hesitate to write anything about it.

I do know this, however: in an open society, people should be as free as possible to express themselves and their interests. Of course, individual freedom is not unlimited; we must live together. Competing freedoms need to be negotiated to assure that everyone’s freedom is allowed to the maximum extent possible while maintaining social cohesion. Doing this takes hard work and careful listening and even more carefully speaking. Shouting doesn’t help much.

I do not have to attend or even approve of drag events to hold that people who enjoy them should be able to. If they want to share them with others, that’s okay, so long as others remain free not to accept the offer. (You are free to avert your eyes when you happen upon Michelangelo’s David if it offends you.) So far as I know, the organizers of the events in Chardon this weekend are not forcing anyone to participate who does not want to.

Of course, children need to be protected from some things available to adults. But young people have access via the internet to far more troubling things than drag brunches and drag story hours, and there is no limit on what they might hear from one another. Vigilant as parents and others might be about what they don’t want their children to learn, they will learn it. Why not give them and their parents a chance to be open about all that’s out there, and discuss how it affects them and their understanding of themselves and of others? It is a healthier way to become adults than by being inhabited by secrets.

I’d like to see the Proud Boys hold a prayer vigil tonight, too, and stay home on Saturday. But since I don’t expect them to do that, I pray for Chardon and its safety and security forces, and that everyone enjoys the day however and wherever they choose to spend it.